


they're comin' to get me (and, honey, i swear that i'm guilty)

by MystxMomo



Series: its the end of the world as we know it (and i feel fine) [2]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Despair Era (Dangan Ronpa), Except the road trip is running from the hope cops, F/F, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:08:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24675121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MystxMomo/pseuds/MystxMomo
Summary: Mioda Ibuki thought she would rule over the airwaves for a lifetime.But the future foundation knows her name, she's going through her midlife crisis at 24, and Tsumiki Mikan is hanging out asleep in the passenger seat of her 1999 subaru forester.In order from least to most important, of course.
Relationships: Mioda Ibuki/Tsumiki Mikan
Series: its the end of the world as we know it (and i feel fine) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1784071
Comments: 16
Kudos: 89





	1. every high has a come down

**Author's Note:**

> Heeey. So the idea to it is that instead of the remnants getting caught by future foundation and sent to the program, they sort of fall apart with time because they don't have a leader that cares enough to stay. This fic is actually set in the same universe as a different fic I'm working on, of which it will be grouped into a series with. I know a lot of people say this, but you genuinely don't have to read that fic to understand this one. 
> 
> Also this one has a super sexy music naming theme. I thought it was appropriate for Mioda. The name of the title comes from "Going to jail" By anarbor, and the chapter title comes from "Every high has a come down." Also by Anarbor.

Tsumiki had taken to operating on the outskirts of the city.

She has a fancy little compound that Enoshima had helped her set up. And by that, of course, she means convinced Souda to rig with enough weapons and explosives to ward off even the bravest of folk. The kind of gates with big ol’ barb wire and electricity, that you could feel the buzz of the thing when you got too close.

Coming into it today, she’d wondered if it was meant to keep people out, or keep Tsumiki in. Not that it was needed. Tsumiki had always been entirely loyal to her. Always obeyed and preached her word like a gospel, an absolute truth. Even Mioda, so enthralled by Enoshima’s words and style, had sometimes had the galls to question her truth. Not that she would have ever said as such. Not that it had ever _mattered_. They were on top of the world, with her. They were the world, with her.

It had been an old hospital. Mioda had never liked those places. Not even in a _despair_ sort of way. There was just something real damn creepy about the way her heels echoed in the halls, unhelped by the response of drills and screams Tsumiki’s hospital specifically had always held. Something real skin crawling about the buzz of LED, the sheer emptiness of the building, the beeping of machinery and computers. 

Tsumiki’s curled up loosely in the passengers seat, now. Close enough that she could touch her, if she wanted. Her head rests on the window, close enough that each breath out leaves a little bit of fog against the glass. She looks sort of like she did in highschool like this. A real soft face to her, gentle like, despite the still drying blood on her cheeks and gloves. 

There was no way of knowing that she’d been screeching at her, less than an hour ago. Cursing her out in strings of vitriol and whispers, that Mioda had to drag her out of that shitty little compound before Future foundation had gotten to her. That the bruises on her cheeks and wrist, the bite marks covering her arms, was all entirely Tsumiki’s fault.

She looks sort of.. Innocent like this. It’s been a real long time since she’s considered Tsumiki _innocent_ , of all things.

She travels down the coast for a while. The road is covered in crashed cars and spare parts in some spots, but they’re easy enough to maneuver around when you’re use to it. Other parts have been cleaned around by Future Foundation (One of the few good things they did, in her opinion. Some things aren’t worth the despair. Some things are just inconvenient, you know?)

Mioda knows her way into the city like the back of her hand. Makes her way in when the nights become a little too quiet, and she had enough backed up and recorded on her tracks that she could get away with disappearing for a day or two. Her schedule had always been packed tight, but Ultimate Despair didn’t need to know all the connections she kept. They didn’t need to know what she did in her spare time. 

There’s a payphone off to the side of the road. She respects the style of it, bright green, in the middle of nowhere, hidden away next to an old broken in bus stop and oddly clean vending machine. When she parks the car to investigate, she discovers the phone is still online. A lot of small things like that are. It’s never been her forte, exactly, more Souda’s thing then her own. But supposedly, it’s easier to let some things rot away on their own then it is to destory the wides of anything that stands in their path.

That the vending machine is very much not alive, so she spends time hitting the glass with a really big rock so that she can break into it and fetch the remaining bags of chips and crackers.

The rock is _really_ big. The sound of breaking glass, somehow, does not wake up Tsumiki. 

(She _does_ look tired. She loses herself in those experiments, in Mioda’s opinion.)

She’s chewing on some old Kitkats when Pekoyama finally picks up. Mochi flavored.

(Like, the kind of old that it sticks weirdly to the roof of her mouth, and tastes almost stale, and the chocolate has melted to the wrapping paper.

It’s gross. But thats despair, baby!)

“How did you get this number.”

“Woah, here there! It’s just Ibuki,” She laughs, but surprises herself with the nerves that sit under the tone of it.

“That question still stands,” But it has far less venom to it, this time.

“Yeah- I have my ways,” Souda had always been a rather loose lipped kind of drunk, and he always knew what their newest private line was. Never remembered what he said, when she got him drunk enough. It was easy to get information out of him, when she needed it, “I won’t take up too much of your time. I need help.”

She can practically hear Pekoyama biting her lip. Now, to call Pekoyama kind would be a lie. She wasn’t exactly kind, wasn’t exactly harsh. The type who didn’t speak until spoken to, didn’t act unless forced to. Real blunt sort of woman, with a sharp stare and a nonexistent presence. Even back in highschool. Even before.. This. 

She hears her _sigh_ , of all things.

“What did you do?” 

“Ibuki did- _I_ did, _nothing_ ,” She’s quick to defend herself, but Pekoyama continues.

“I told you to be careful with the stunt’s you pull. I can’t help now, Mioda-,”

“But I didn’t _do anything_ ,” Her voice teeters into a little bit of a whine near the end of that, something she scrambles to quickly correct. Serious, she thinks. This is serious. She’s not begging the woman to come help move her equipment on an impulse. She’s not attempting to drag her away from Kuzuryuu or anything. She just- “Future Foundation _knows_ , Peko-chan”

Pekoyama goes quiet.

“They know my name. They know- Tsumiki’s name too. They know our faces, Peko-chan,” She thumbs at the cord of the phone, “I had to leave my recording studio. All my tracks and recording stuff! It’s all gone now. And- I barely got to Tsumiki in time. But they _know_ who we are now,”

Pekoyama releases her breath, “.. You too?” the words are thoughtful, torn apart from the previously scolding tone she’d had moments before hand.

She nods at the phone, before realizing that Pekoyama cannot, in fact, see her doing that, “Yes yes yes.”

“Hm,” Pekoyama 

“You don’t think we got ratted out?” She was not against stabbing one of her classmates, exactly, if they were the snitch. Not against doing far worse things. She has sleeves of tattoo’s up her arms and legs, each proving another kill to her name. In the spirit of things, of course. In the meaning of them, “You don’t think Servant and -”

“I do not,” Pekoyama tells her, and it forces the tension out of her shoulders near immediately, “They would not.”

The answer is firm. She doesn’t push.

“I don’t know what to do,” She admits, “I need your help,”

“.... What do you think I can do?”

“I don’t _know_ , that’s the _point_ ,” Mioda wants to pull her hair out. Her voice raises, like it tends to when she’s passionate. She’s never been good at keeping quiet. Never been good at all, “You’re the Yakuza, aren’t you? _Help me_ ,”

“Okay. Calm down,” The response is surprisingly immediate. She stops on the order, not to follow it, but because she wants an answer sooner. Wants an answer immediately. She hears nothing, which she knows is Pekoyama’s Very Important Thinking Time (Kamukura was the same was, always went real quiet when he was thinking really hard, shot her the nastiest looks when she got too loud)

“Change your appearance. Don’t go by the same name. Don’t stay in one place for too long unless you have to. I can’t help you beyond that. Use common sense. Please. You have survived this long. You will be fine,” She jots the points down like notes in her head, ignores the insult, “Keep a low profile. And Mioda?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Don’t call this line again,” Mioda opens her mouth to speak, but Pekoyama catches her before she can, “I’m serious. We’re.. Waiting. This out. I.. _won’t_ say too much,” Won’t. Not can’t. She’s not under an order to do this. She’s not forbidden. Mioda can respect as much, respects it more then the orders Pekoyama takes, won’t push that, “We have Souda.”

“I’m so sorry,” She says, with no sympathy to her.

“He’s very… loud,” Pekoyama sighs, “But I will live. Do not try to find him. Don’t try and find us. Stay on the road until you find somewhere safe. Keep close to eachother, and trust no one that you meet.”

Mioda looks over to the car, where Tsumiki is still snoozing. She thinks back to earlier, how desperate Tsumiki had been to stay. Looks down that those bitemarks, some still bleeding and broken.

She doesn't know if trust is the word she'd use to describe this, at that moment. She doesn't think she has to mention that, exactly, “Sounds like a sad kinda life to live,” She tells Pekoyama, blankly. 

“Well. Yes. But that is our fate, isn’t it?”

Unsympathetic. Stoic. The kitkats, she notes, have melted in her hands. 

“Yeah. I guess so.”


	2. I'm afraid that I may have faked it (and I wouldn't be caught dead in this place)

There’s an underground club at the heart of Tokyo that’s thrived in the wreckage of Despair. 

Nightly drug fueled rave that run well into the morning, where the food is a little too overpriced, and always stale with just a LITTLE bit of mold, and the dance floor is a pit of sweat and limbs and occasionally vomit. Mioda knows this because she’s dj’ed here personally on more than one occasion. Has met the owner in person, has walked these halls in neon paints and glitter splashed make-up.

It’s a few minutes past two in the morning when they allow her and Tsumiki in through the back. Mioda is careful to guide her with a single arm, and not to allow the creep bodyguard in a wicked looking monokuma mask to get more than a passing glance at her. Tsumiki is still in that nurse gown she owns and favors. The one that's suppose to be pure white, soaked with blood and cuts off just under her ass, and shows off the fact that she’s wearing a garter belt to hold on the thigh highs she’s in. 

Mioda notices all of this because she’s carefully ignoring Tsumiki’s harsh, bitter sobs.

The bathroom is dingy, and unclean. Needles and cigarette buds on the floor, the scent of weed covering up whatever else is here. If she looks long enough, she thinks she sees blood dried into the cracks of the floor.

They’re playing one of her songs, tonight. The hypnotic hump of screams and bass muffles against the door, just barely keeping the cold, tempting taste of despair from her lips.

She’s is in the process of bleaching the side of her hair when Tsumiki finally calms herself down enough to speak.

"What did you do,” She asks. Voice raspy, staring down at gloved hands with a long look to her. 

“Huh??” Mioda doesn’t turn around to look at her, but her gaze does flicker to the woman’s reflection.

“I said  _ what did you DO _ ,” She’s doing that thing that she does. Laces her fingers into her hair and grips in a way that seems too painful, and screams in a tone that doesn’t feel like it belongs to her. All accusation, all blame. Mioda, carefully, does not take it to heart. Tsumiki just gets like this sometimes.

She is still holding the bleach coated brush in her hand, carefully not letting the bleach drip down her hand, staring at Tsumiki when she says, “Sweetie,” in a way thats not at all patronizing, “I saved your life.”

==

Tsumiki has bandages littered on her face and arms. Covering up little needle marks and bruises, cuts and scrapes. She’s always been clumsy, like that. It’s still something Mioda takes time to account for, especially as Tsumiki unwraps and wraps her arm back up in a phase of nervous jitters. 

“You didn’t  _ save _ me,” Tsumiki mumbles to herself, stutters over her own breath. She has a habit of pasing. Mioda makes note of it as she mixes up her dye, prepares her scissors, waits for the bleach to do its job, “You ruined this. You ruined what my beloved set out for me.”

“Peko-chan isn’t going to help anymore, you know,” Mioda tells her, all pointed like, “She told me herself. They’re  _ getting out of the business _ ,” She closes her eyes. The bathroom doesn’t have good ventilation whatsoever. The smell of the bleach stings her eyes and burns at her lungs and her scalp is on fire, but she knows better than to scratch at the strands.

“Cowards,” Is Tsumiki’s kneejerk spit, “Disappointing. Not surprising. But disappointing. I would have thought better of them. I thought that they would hold out longer,” Mioda doesn’t like the shadow that comes over her face, “But oh! I guess the two big bad yakuza couldn’t hold their own. Even if it’s in the name of my beloved, they’re only out for themselves!”

Mioda can only hum, barely following along with the rapid, quick fire chatter, “Who knows what Sonia and Tanaka are up to, these days. I heard they’re getting their shit handed to them over in Novosauna-”

“Novoselic,” Tsumiki corrects, sniffs.

“Yeah, that.”

Tsumiki groans into her hands.

“Regardless, they’re a no go,” She throws out a smile that's all empty, entirely coy. Tsumiki sighs in a way that Mioda thinks is suppose to be acceptance, but comes out entirely airy and preformative and sort of makes her want to slap the woman upside the head.

“They were never worth following to begin with,” Tsumiki tells her, with certainty, in that shaky sort of calm she lulls herself into, “It’s just like them.  _ Cowards _ , the two of them.“

“Right. And Izuru-chan and Servant-chan fucked off to who knows where,” She starts. She, apparently, does not need to continue that line of thought. Tsumiki’s head snaps around, meets her gaze with a look of absolute enragement.

“Their loyalty to her has always been  _ shaky _ ,” Tsumiki tells her, shivers in what she thinks is near sincere rage, “They’ve only ever been in this for  _ themselves _ . I never trusted Kamukura-san, you know. I tried telling her, that he was going to turn away from her eventually. That he  _ couldn’t _ love her like we did,” Tsumiki pulls at her hair again. Mioda can hear the way the roots crack against her hand, “She laughed at me. Because of course she knew that. She always knew everything! She assured me, she said that she was ready if that happened. But now she isn’t even here to defend her legacy. It's all falling apart, it’s all-” Tsumiki is working herself up again, breathing heavy enough to send herself into a coughing fit.

“Woah. Okay-”

The door to the bathroom begins to creep open. Tsumiki acts without hesitation. She whips around to throw the first thing within her reach. The toiletpaper bounces off the wall hard enough to come reeling back into her, hitting her harmlessly in the stomach.

The door stalls.

“Get  _ OUT _ !” She wails.

It clicks shut.

..

She sobs like she was hit with a battering ram.

Mioda groans and rests her head against the cracked mirror.

==

Mioda takes the time to chop through strands of her still wet hair, cutting off near the base of the neck in choppy, sharp gestures.

“I’ve been doing it myself since I was younger, you know,” She tells Tsumiki, with what is probably an inappropriate amount of cheer.

Tsumiki doesn’t answer her immediately.

“It’s just kinda more punk rock,” She continues, “To do it yourself.”

“I’ve done.. Done my hair one my own my entire life too. You know what I got for it?” Tsumiki mumbles, runs a hand through the blocky edges, “Ah. Ah well- I suppose my beloved did my hair for quite some time. She was so fond of ruining it for me,” Tsumiki rubs her cheeks, smiles in a way thats a little too bright for the sentiment.

“Really?” Mioda tilts her head, squints, “I always thought it looked pretty killer on you. Kinda got that, alternative  _ fuck you _ goin on.”

“..” Tsumiki’s smile falters a bit.

“I can give Mikan-chan a little off the top…?”

Tsumiki narrows her eyes, “Don’t  _ touch _ my hair.” 

“Sheesh. Fine. Killjoy,” She throws the bag she’s brought in Tsumiki’s way, hears it hit her chest with a small  _ Oof,  _ “At least get changed into something else.”

Tsumiki eyes the bag with suspect, fingers brushing around the clothing she’s unceremoniously shoved in there. A find from the thrift store down the street. It’s been looted more than enough times, another hadn’t added to the inherent tragedy of an already destroyed buisiness, “Oh,” She says, “These aren’t.. horrible,” She sounds surprised, considers it. 

“Well duh. I know EVERYONES fashion,” Mioda extends her arms up, stretches, “It’s not anything special, but it will do for now.”

Tsumiki takes a moment to compose herself. Mioda thinks, originally, Tsumiki might be staring at her. 

She realizes, last second, that Tsumiki is staring at her own reflection.

==

They leave the club as quietly as they came. Mioda has her hair dyed in pretty shades of blondes and pinks, a quick job to cover up the much more distinct reds and blacks she’d been rocking beforehand, and Tsumiki is in a skirt that's still maybe a little too short, in a shirt that shows off his midriff when she stretches. Still in the same thigh highs, with a hint of blood on them.

“It.. It makes you stand out more,” Tsumiki had told her, under a stuttered breath, “At least the black looked natural.”

“Ah! But then how will I dye it darker when the time comes,” Tsumiki looks startles. Mioda reaches over to grab her head, “Think, Mikan-chan. Think!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Only two thing's. I decided going into this fic that I wanted to play more with the personality Tsumiki showed at the end of the the third trial. On top of that, I want to play with despair as a setting as less like.. the world being genuinely destroyed in it's entirely, but rather a world where the entire existence in it is miserable. So society still functions as a society, it's not like a zombie apocalypse free for all. But it's terrifying and situation stressful to live in.  
> Unless, you know, you happen to run the place.

**Author's Note:**

> As with all things, you can find me @ Mystxmomo on tumblr and twitter. But mostly just tumblr.


End file.
